A government advertising campaign claiming that a new diploma qualification could get school leavers into any university has been banned by the advertising watchdog for being misleading.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families ran a radio and national press campaign promoting "The Diploma", a qualification for 14 to 19-year-olds that the ads claimed "opens the doors to university and work".

According to the radio ad, the diploma was "accepted by all universities", while the press campaign ran with a line stating that it "can get you into any university".

"Ed Balls boasted that his new diploma was on course to overtake the A-level and become the qualification of choice for young people. But universities aren't impressed, teachers are confused and students have shunned the course. So, in desperation the government spent millions on an advertising campaign which has now been exposed as dishonest," Gove said.

The Advertising Standards Authority received two complaints challenging the claims made in the ads because Cambridge University only accepted one of the five diplomas offered.

In response, the DCSF said it had worked closely with stakeholders, such as the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, to make sure "all were content with the accuracy of the campaign messages".

The DCSF admitted that a "small number of universities, including Cambridge, had said they would not accept all five Diploma lines". The department maintained that because all universities accepted at least one of the diplomas, the claims in the ads were acceptable.

However, the ASA ruled that because the DCSF campaign implied that the diplomas "represented a level of academic qualification that would be accepted by all universities", yet this was not the case, the ads were misleading and must not appear again.

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